Chemists at Penn have identified a new approach for purifying rare earth metals, crucial components of technology that require environmentally-damaging mining procedures. Seventy-five of the... Read more
Thin-film solar panels, the cell phone in your hand and the LED bulb lighting your home are all made using some of the rarest, most expensive elements found on the planet. An international t... Read more
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and partners Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Wisconsin-based Eck Industries have developed aluminum alloys... Read more
Technologies from wind turbines to electric vehicles rely on critical materials called rare-earth elements. These elements, though often abundant, can be difficult and increasingly costly to... Read more
An international group of researchers has synthesized an extremely rare mineral and used it as a catalyst precursor to improve two reactions that are of great importance to the chemical indu... Read more
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have created new kinds of fluorescent lighting phosphors that use far less rare-earth elements than cur... Read more
A supply of clean, affordable energy depends on little-known substances There’s one problem with the silicon age: its magic depends on elements that are far scarcer than beach sand. So... Read more
